Ninochka

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91-year-old late repatriate Nina Linke has lived in Berlin for 26 years. She tells a tragic story from her past. Irina, her third daughter preserves the story in a book.

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Synopsis

The family story begins in Ukraine 300 years ago, when Katarina the Great invited Germans to come to Ukraine. They wanted to work, have food and live out their lives quietly and happily. Georg Linke, Nina Linke’s grandfather, founded a german village called Georgstall in 1870. The Germans lived very well but could never have imagined what fate had in store for their children. Before the war the people had lost everything and had to overcome Holodomor (the Terror-Famine), but the worst was yet to come. The great Terror was a campaign of persecution in the Soviet Union that lasted from the Autumn 1936 to the end of 1938. In that period around 1.5 million people were arrested, half of whom were shot. The others, almost without exception, were sent to the Gulags or incarcerated. Nina’s father Karl was also taken on 26 February 1938 and never saw his family again. Before the Second World War, Nina had already lost all of her parents and grandparents. She was a little German girl in a small German village and after WW2 became a little Russian girl in Kazakhstan. Her nationality and mother tongue were the last things she could lose, but speaking German was forbidden in Kazakhstan. The most important thing was that they all had their lives, thankfully Nina and the other Germans all survived. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russian-Germans were able to move back to Germany in 1990. Nina Linke got her German nationality and name back 26 years ago and was able to move back to Berlin with her third daughter. She had carried the burden of the story for her whole life, which is why her daughter Irina decided to preserve it in a book. At the end of the film, Nina opens the door and welcomes in her grandchildren. She shows us into her bedroom, where the walls are covered in old photos and she starts to tell the story again.

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